Insomniac
by Letta
Summary: In the wake of tragedy, Naruto struggles with the difference between hallucinations and reality. Noncrack. No pairings.


Title: Insomniac

Author: Letta

Disclaimer: Even though if I created a series I'd totally write fanfiction for it, it's not the case in this instance.

Rating: PG-13

Warnings: AU-ish -set sometime in Naruto's late teens, early adulthood. It's not happy.

Summary: Naruto struggles with insomnia after tragedy.

A/N: I was stuck in another fic, and ended up writing this. I only skimmed through it once, but I think my grammar is usually fairly decent anyway. Oh, and try to ignore any sort of timeline for the most part, it hasn't really been defined. This is experimental fiction -not in content, but in the style in which I wrote it.

* * *

She 'tsks' when She sees me and I try to ignore it while She tucks a lock of errant hair behind Her ear. I must look like the Hell I feel. 

I'm not surprised.

She leaves the room and I watch Her roseatte hair tap lightly against Her neck with each step. A minute later, She returns, and this time Her hair is blonde, eyes brown. I am used to these changes, and can recognize Her easily.

Gently, She takes my wrist and turns it so my palm is facing up and She drops two pills on to it. To help me sleep, She says. She lets go and I look down at the tiny capsules. I want water, but when I look up She is gone, and I am also used to these sudden disappearances.

-

In the morning, I am refreshed, but that does not mean the tiredness has gone away. It is still there, lurking. Even with medicinal aid, sleep is not easy.

Even so, just laying in a bed for a few hours and letting my body relax does wonders, but my mind doesn't shut off, and that is what I need rest from the most.

In those times when I cannot sleep, but am too tired to move, my mind wanders and trips over past events, hashing and rehashing them, reminding me of what I could have done or should have done.

In the end, it doesn't matter, because those things I could've and should've done I didn't do.

The past is still the past, and my failures are still failures.

Only it becomes more apparent to me that my failures are fuck-ups, and they're big fuck-ups, and maybe that is why I am alone now.

I think about this as I stir my breakfast idly. It is tasteless, and I poke at it more than eat it. When I leave, I pour what's left (_most_) of it down the drain.

My pace is unhurried, not because I have nowhere to go, but because it doesn't matter when I get there.

-

The building is unobtrusive as I pass through its doors, heading directly to the left. The doors are held open, a catch preventing them from shutting. At the far end of the room, I see Her sitting behind a table, looking annoyed and bored. I smile tiredly and wave. She waves back, but shoots me a look of concern.

_She has kept Her blonde hair today._

I walk to one of the assistants and ask for the list of missions available. He can only tell me the ones that are unclassified, since the highest-ranking missions are only handed out by the Hokage.

They are uninteresting, but I thank him anyway while covering a yawn with my hand.

Instead of going back home, or even to one of the training fields, I wander the halls of the building.

I find myself in a familiar section, where the office of the village leader is and my face is not uncommon.

Shizune smiles brightly when she sees me coming around a corner. We exchange idle chitchat, our conversation brief, though, because she has things she must do, whereas I do not.

I wave as she leaves and turn around to see Her.

"Brat," She says. She is taking on a role that has both little and much meaning to me (_mother, sister, daughter_).

"Good morning," I say, more out of habit than an actual comment on the morning, or wishing Her a good one.

"You didn't take any missions," She noted, Her voice leading, but neither approval nor disapproval could be discerned. I shook my head, realizing She must have seen me.

"You look tired."

"I'm always tired."

"Did you sleep last night?"

"Some," I admitted, without saying in so many words that it probably wasn't what She considered enough.

"How much?"

I shrugged. I hadn't exactly been timing, and told Her as much. She gave me a hard look, but She didn't say anything.

"How are you feeling?"

A new approach.

"Tired."

"And…?"

"Just tired."

"I mean emotionally."

I give Her a funny look. I am so exhausted that I cannot bother to sort out how I feel about anything. The things I feel would just make me more tired anyway. Before She can ask anything else, I pat Her shoulder lightly, and walk away.

She does not try to stop me.

-

I crashed on the couch in my apartment and was out almost immediately. I awoke an hour later, feeling like it had done more harm than good.

I went to the kitchen and found Her there.

_Pink hair, brown eyes._

She is looking in my cupboard, an undisguised frown on Her face.

"You don't keep much, do you?" She asks, wryly.

I chuckled mirthlessly.

"I, ah, haven't really been eating much."

"I can tell," She says, without looking at me.

I shrug, a habit that I had quickly picked up and overused, but cannot think of from where or whom.

For a moment, She turns Her head away and looks at the empty sink. I don't have much for dishware and eat mostly from disposable containers.

When She turns back to me, Her eyes have paled to a colorless shade, and She says in a halting tone that I am too thin.

I agree because there is too much effort in arguing and I no longer have the energy.

She decides to cook for me, and it is something I don't recognize. It is neither good nor bad, but flavorless and I eat it all because She is standing there watching me.

I think She just took what She found in the bare fridge and sparse cupboards and threw them together in the one pot that I own. I don't cook much.

Afterwards, She brings me a set of nightclothes and two pills.

It seems as if I had just gone to bed, but Her eyes are so light and concerned that I cannot say no.

I take off my shirt as She is leaving, and She remarks that I seem to be bruising easily.

She says its poor nutrition, and then She's out the door.

-

I awake and it is night. She is by my bedside, her hair soaking in the night, and I know that this time it is dark.

I cannot tell the color of Her eyes in the moonlight, but She hands me a glass of warm milk and says She figured I'd wake up.

I thank Her, drinking it under Her steady gaze. Afterwards, I feel lightheaded and foggy. Like the world is shutting down, or perhaps it is me, and I know that She has taken the liberty to dissolve sleeping aids in my drink.

-

I find myself training alone, but this happens more often than not. I rarely train anymore, exhaustion adding gravity to my bones.

I quit after a half hour, maybe less.

I am lying beneath a tree, tired and unable to do anything about it when a shadow falls across me.

Shikamaru looks down at me, and suddenly, I know what it's like to be him.

He drops to the ground beside me, his eyes careful as they look me over. For once, he does not seem to look like every effort he makes is a waste of time.

"You look like crap."

"Thanks."

"You haven't been taking care of yourself."

"I don't sleep well."

"You don't eat well, either," he says, taking note of the way my clothes hang off me when before they were fitted on me. My arms and legs have thinned, and in places across my body, the bones are noticeable, but my appetite is barren, and I can only force myself to eat when She's there, watching me.

I do not respond to him, though, because everything he says is apparent.

"What's going on?"

I know he's asking a deeper question that what it appears on the surface.

"I'm watching the clouds right now," I reply, deliberately misinterpreting both questions. He frowns because he knows I am pretending to be stupid.

"Maybe it's time to find some new clouds."

"And if I like these clouds?" I challenge obstinately, because we are not talking about clouds and it irritates me.

"These ones are stagnant –they're not going anywhere, and sooner or later they're going to rain on you."

"It's already raining," I smile ruefully.

"It'll pour on you if you don't get indoors soon enough," he says and walks away.

I watch him leave.

-

As if Shikamaru predicted the weather, it is raining when I get home, the wind whipping the rain at angles.

I am wet and cold, and She is there waiting, a cup of something warm in Her hand as She hands it to me.

"You're still not sleeping enough."

I ignore the comment and take a sip of the liquid –tea of some sort- and walk past Her.

_Her eyes are colorless, her hair blonde._

I set the cup down on a table briefly, while I take my wet shirt off. She is in front of me when I remove it, Her palm open to me, four pills in Her hand.

I take them and go towards my bed.

She is gone when I awake.

-

I come home from a mission, feeling as though weight has been added to every limb. It was an easy job, normally below my rank and skill, but I struggled with it anyway. Sleep felt like it had been just beyond the reach of my fingertips, not matter how far I stretched out my hand.

_Her colors are green and pink_ _today_ and She is reading a magazine that was delivered to my door by mistake, belonging to a neighbor I do not know.

"How did it go?"

"I finished it."

She looks at me, Her gaze piercing, but She says nothing about, instead, "You are going to crash and burn, and you won't rise from the ashes."

I am no phoenix.

"I never claimed I would," I said, because we both know that if this pattern doesn't change, I am going to fall and I will not get back up. This lack of sleep is deadly.

"You know this is all because-"

"DON'T SAY IT!" I yell, desperation kneading its way through my voice, the first real emotion in weeks. She looks shocked for an instant, but She does not relent.

"You can't do anything about it. What's done is done. Why do you think you can change the past?"

"…I don't," I say after a long moment because Her words are glassy shards that cut through me.

"Then why aren't you letting go?"

"How can I?" my voice is helpless to my own ears.

"Keep in mind, he was the one to show you his back. Turnabout's fair play."

What She suggests is not something I can accept.

"I-"

"He's not coming back, and you know it."

I bring my hands to my face, and push slightly at closed eyes, as if the pressure will chase away the fatigue that threatens to overtake me. She is hurting me, but rather than growing angry, I find I do not have the energy, and become more tired than I was. Pain once made me aware I was alive.

"If-" I begin, lowering my hands, and seeing that _she is blonde and her eyes are an iced brown._

"He's dead," there is cold finality in Her words.

She gets up from the couch, the magazine left behind as She walks up to me. Her palm is extended, and in Her hand are six pills.

I swallow them dry and fall onto the couch, letting gravity pull my limbs into the cushions until I feel I am being swallowed alive.

I hear Her walk out of the apartment before my eyes close in sleep.

-

I cannot tell the days apart. Time has lost any usefulness. Night and day blend into each other without clear definition.

I feel as if I am a specter wandering aimlessly through a world I do not belong.

With the way people look at me, I think it might be true. I wonder how much longer before they cannot see me at all, and I will move among them unseen.

Even my skin has begun to look transparent.

I am an apparition that is still visible, and the only way I know I am not dead is because I can feel the weight of my own body, threatening to pull me to the ground. This exhaustion has become heavy and I wear it like chains.

I promised to meet Shikamaru, but I find myself taking a longer route, despite the difficulty of each step, because the direct path would lead me past the cemetery.

I avoid it because it reminds me of the past and what I have lost which are things I do not like to think about.

I find Shikamaru inside the small food stand and sit next to him. He barely glances at me before saying, "A storm is coming."

Outside, the sky is clear.

He is not talking about the weather.

I look at him for a long time, and something inside of me gives under the strain, snapping like a dry twig, and a cave-in is imminent.

"I don't have an umbrella."

"I know," he says, staring into a bowl of something he is not eating.

This is a problem he can not solve for all his intelligence, and it burns him, because he feels it is more important to him than anything that has come his way yet. It is not Shogi or Go, it is on a much larger game board and is something neither of us can stop.

I realize that for one who is usually considered a simple person, I am too complicated.

"You're not eating," he mentions, and there is an undercurrent of anger in his voice. Despite himself, he is mad at both of us. I am too tired for it to matter. Anxiety is distant to me, and even the grief of my failures is felt through a filter.

All that matters is this overwhelming exhaustion clinging to every cell.

I order something to make him happy, because arguing is more effort than I can handle and I pick at it under his harsh watch, finishing maybe half and for him, I can see, that will have to be enough.

-

I stare at myself in the mirror. I am lighter and I have lost muscle mass. My face is sunken (_gaunt_, _skeletal_), and the rings around my eyes rival Gaara's.

My eyes are dull –I think they have become lighter.

I look away and catch sight of my hand. I can see the bones in my wrist. Soon, I think, I will be nothing but bones, all flesh stripped away –not rotted, but wasted.

I will be nothing but a pile of bones that will not bleach because there is no more sun and even then I doubt I will find rest.

/_Sometimes no sleep is better than an hour or two._/ The name of the person who told me that is lost to memory, and they were referring to a night of sleep that you could make up later. This advice is useless to me, because I am unable to collect on sleep due.

I go to the kitchen and fill a glass of water. There is a bottle of vitamins on the counter and I take one, because if I can't eat, I can at least try to get nutrients.

Next to the bottle of vitamins is one of sleeping pills.

I tip what is left into my open hand, counting eight.

"Some drugs you're supposed to take with food," She says from behind me. I swallow what is clutched in my palm and empty my glass before turning to face Her. _Dark hair, green eyes._

"I ate with Shikamaru."

"How much?"

"It was something and that's better than nothing," I say, ironically reversing my advice about sleeping.

Her mouth is a grim line and I make my way past Her. I feel Her eyes on me as I pass out.

-

The world is swirling by me and I move through it sluggishly. My eyelids are heavy, but I find no relief when they fall shut.

I no longer bother to show up and check for missions. I am aware that I would do more harm than good.

This is what my life and dreams have surmounted to. Why is it I can't find it in me to care?

Even _his_ death does not evoke the emotion from me that it once did. When it's night and I stare up at my ceiling awake, I see his haunting eyes form in the dark, narrowing cruelly in taunts before growing cold in death. A reminder of what I lost before death. There is only a trickle of the agony I once felt.

In the stale air the accusations are voiceless, but I hear them anyway.

Nothingness surrounds me and is consuming me until I become indistinguishable from it.

My body has all but atrophied to skin and bones. I imagine I can hear my skeleton knock together as I walk. Click clunk clock.

My imagination blends together with reality, but both seem feeble.

I am weary and that is all I know. I want sleep, but it only comes with a handful of pills. Reality stretches to the four walls of my apartment, but even that is stretched thin and strained. The tick of the clock beside my bed is endless, maddening.

It only serves as the cue that I am awake. The harsh glare of digital numbers scream silently at me.

She walks over and sits beside me on the mattress. I lean up, and a glass is pressed to my lips, chalky liquid flooding my mouth.

Slowly, the world tilts and my eyelids slide shut.

-

I am on the floor. I woke here, but I can't bring myself to move. The couch is at my back, a small table next to it.

"You're not getting up, are you?"

I swivel my head to Her, _blonde hair, green eyes._

I am not sure if she means physically or otherwise, but I suspect both.

"No," I answer, and the truth hangs heavy in the air, alloyed to my monosyllable. "No, I don't think I am." There is finality in my words that I had not intended to put there, but it is present all the same.

Her eyes are sad, but She knows better than to fight at this point. She has watched my waste away. There is nothing that can be done. At the end, I have failed myself.

Off the table next to the couch, I grab the bottle of pills. My head is heavy and fatigue clings to me. I am not quite sure what I just decided. I am going to sleep for the very little time the tablets will allow me and then mull over it.

The bottle is nearly full, and when I drop it to the floor, it is empty. Distantly, Her footsteps echo against the hard floor as She kneels beside me.

Her hand passes remorsefully through my hair.

I close my eyes and I do not awake.

* * *

A/N: How to explain this one? Naruto no longer distinguishes between certain women in his life, combining them into one person. Most of Her appearances I would say are hallucinations, and when they aren't, he probably can't figure out which one She is. At any rate, I think his thinking is more linear than what I wrote in "Psychosis". 

So I did a little research on insomnia to see if it could cause psychological problems (because I'm pretty sure I heard somewhere that it can), and couldn't really find anything (I didn't look very hard), but apparently the reverse is quite common. Also stress and traumatic events can trigger it. I occasionally suffer from insomnia (almost always during the spring due to sudden temperature changes) but, as I far as I know, I haven't developed 'crazy' from it. I do lose my appetite for a few weeks, though. However, it's never even come close to being this bad. I also wrote a good portion of this late at night rather than sleeping, which seems kind of ironic.

Other than that, this fic is such a major experiment for me. Writing in first person and in present tense. I'm beginning to notice a pattern in my experimental fics: Naruto. Crazy. I have another one that I thought up while writing this, and it seems the pattern will continue.


End file.
